In August 2012, just before the 65th anniversary of independence INDA, the magazine Outlook India published the results of a survey conducted among its readers, who were asked to express themselves on who, after the Mahatma, was the 'largest Indian.

The Mahatma was, of course, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
Not surprisingly, Outlook has assumed its leadership.
Gandhi is the undisputed Indian barometer of greatness, if not the size in general.
Who could criticize Gandhi?
All we know as the little man weak and malnourished by the pure and pious morality.
The father of nonviolent resistance in India, a country that has helped to free from the shackles of British imperial power.
He fought on the front row until a Hindu fanatic killed him, making him a martyr.
My grandfather was in prison with Gandhi in 1933, so I grew up with the knowledge that the myth was fed by some half-truths, and my parents have given me an idea of Gandhi in between praise and harsh criticism.
We never believed that he had orchestrated only by the movement for the independence of India.
In the decades after his assassination in 1948, the image of Gandhi was cleansed of questionable aspects and rebuilt at the table, so that it is easy to forget that his rhetoric was holding on racism, hatred for women's sexuality, and the refusal to support the release of Dalit or "untouchable".
Gandhi lived for more than two decades, from 1893 to 1914, in South Africa, where he fought for the rights of the Indians-and only the Indians.
For him, as he admitted quite candidly, South African blacks were barely human.
He was referring to them using the derogatory slang term South African kaffir.
He complained that the Indians were considered "slightly better, at most, the savages or natives of Africa."
In 1903 he declared that "the white race in South Africa should be the predominant race."
After being jailed in 1908, he had to say about the fact that the Indians were considered together with non-blacks to white prisoners.
These aspects of Gandhi's thoughts have been reported in the spotlight by some South African authors, for example, in this book, but I never managed to dent the dominant view.
In that same period, Gandhi began to show a strong misogyny.
Once two of his followers were molested by a guy in front of him, and Gandhi in response forced the two women to cut their hair, to make sure there would attract more attention.
(Michael Connellan in the Guardian explained that Gandhi believed that women lose their humanity when a man raped.)
He believed that men could not control their baser impulses, but that the perpetrators of these impulses were women-themselves completely at the mercy of their desires.
Rita Banerji, in his book Sex and Power, claims that Gandhi considered menstruation as "the event of subjection of the female to his sexuality."
He also believed that the use of contraceptives was a sign of loose morals.
He directly addressed the issue of libido vowing chastity (without discussing it first with his wife), and using women-including some underage girls, as the granddaughter-to test his self-control.
He slept naked beside them to prove himself not to feel excitement.
Kasturba, Gandhi's wife, was his most frequent victims.
"I can not bear to face Ba," Gandhi once said.
"Often his expression is that of a docile cow, and as often happens with cows, gives you the feeling that somehow stupid is trying to say something."
Apologists will say that of course in Hinduism cows are sacred-and Gandhi likening his wife to a cow would do her a compliment.
But when Kasturba Gandhi took the pneumonia has denied penicillin, despite would support doctors who would cure; He insisted saying that the new medicine was an alien substance in the body that the wife should not have taken.
The disease killed her in 1944.
Only a year later, perhaps conscious of the serious mistake, Gandhi took quinine to cure malaria.
He survived.
In the West Gandhi is considered the one who has fought for the annihilation of caste.
Yet Gandhi for the emancipation of the Dalits was not even really be taken into account.
Dalits still continue to suffer from the direct consequences of prejudices rooted in the cultural fabric of India.
The story, as written by Arundhati Roy in "The Doctor and the Saint", has been incredibly kind to Gandhi.
Consider his simple imperfections prejudices, small spots in an otherwise crystalline figure.
The apologists insist in saying that Gandhi was imperfect and human.
Maybe transform his prejudices into something positive, to prove he was like us.
Or insist on another aspect: focus attention on Gandhi prejudice is a sign of sick fascination of a certain part of the world to India's problems, as if Western writers wanted necessarily undermine the credibility of the country.
The dark side of Gandhi here highlighted persist in Indian society today-the strong racism, the common disdain for the female body, myopia on the conditions of the Dalits.
It is no coincidence that these aspects of Gandhi's rhetoric has been removed from his legacy.
But the definition "the greatest Indian of all time" is a huge burden for anyone-especially because he lives in India more than a billion people.
And then it's easier to idolize a man who never existed for real.

From Vice